Finding the best app for reading your DRM-free comics library on iPad

When I read a comic book on a mobile device, I tend to forget I'm doing so. This is especially the case when I'm comfortably seated on the couch with snacks in hand. There’s nothing like getting lost in a comic, but not every app lets you reach reading nirvana so easily. Purchasing comics, moving their files to an iPhone or iPad, and organizing them all can become ridiculously cumbersome depending on what app you’re using. If you’re looking to spend your comics budget on actual titles instead of an app, cost can also make choosing a comic reader pretty difficult.

For us comics aficionados, maintaining a library and having a good reading experience is essential. Which apps offer the best experience when it comes to storing, syncing, and most of all, reading comic books on the iPad? We reviewed five iOS comic readers that let you load your own comics library onto your iPad. You'll notice we did not review the popular comics apps made by the major publishers, such as Marvel and DC, because those apps limit your reading to titles from their own brands. Other apps, like Comics, offer multiple stores to buy from in one app, but they do not readily let you import your own files for easy reading. (We're planning a follow-up piece that focuses on just those types of apps. Keep an eye out for it in the coming weeks.)

If you want to be able to organize your own collection of digital comics, you’ll need an app that can work with DRM-free file types. Some of these formats, like CBZ and CBR, have often been used for sharing pirated scans of comics, but these formats are also supported by many independent online comics stores (such as SLG), who will let you choose your format of choice, DRM-free.

In reviewing these five apps, we focused on the usability of each one. Can you load and sync comics without too many confusing steps? We also looked at the overall user experience: is the comic reader actually enjoyable to use? We focused on the iPad versions, but wherever a universal version of the app is available, we listed it as such, in case you are curious about using it on your iPhone or stretching your dollar.

Comic Flow is an open source comic reader made only for the iPad (sorry, no iPhone version is available). As an iPad app, it aims for simplicity in its interface. After you sync your comics to the app via USB and iTunes, the app presents plain rows of thumbnails showing your digital library. In my tests, however, I had to update the library manually by using a button in the setting panel. Only then could I see titles I had just synced via iTunes.

There are four buttons at the top of the screen that let you sort by series, name, date, and status (read or unread). And that’s where its library management features end. You can mark all the titles as read or unread.

Comic Flow's reading experience itself offers no frills, but it does let you focus on reading your comic. The progress bar at the bottom of the screen is subtle but easy to understand, and it looks a lot like the progress bar found in the iOS versions of Amazon’s Kindle app. Comic Flow is free, and if you’re interested in joining the development community around it, it’s a good place to read your comics while supporting open source initiatives.

Platform: iPad

Format support: CBR, CBZ, and PDF

The Good: The price is right and you can get involved in the project.

The Bad: If you own a lot of titles, it’s going to be a nightmare to manage your library.

Enlarge/ Comic Zeal's "slider" takes some getting used to, but can actually help manage multiple comics for users with larger collections.

Comic Zeal is the only paid app out of the five. Its current price of $4.99 is not a bad investment, considering that it provides a really well-rounded set of features and solid user experience. The interface is elegant and you can tell a lot of thought and creativity went into the design, which resembles a wood-paneled table or shelf similar to the iPad's built-in iBooks app. The controls let you toggle viewing your library in list or grid view. Besides USB sync, you can perform comic syncing over WiFi with iOS 5. There is also a button labeled “Get more comics” which lets you join SyncDocs services or download comics from biolithic. Comic Zeal provides many interstitial help screens and tutorial videos that teach you how to use its features.

Comic Zeal’s interface features “sliders,” which are ribbon-like objects that let you take advantage of its tagging system to help you get organized. You can easily put comics into series or create custom tags by dragging comics titles using the sliders. I found this feature very useful in organizing whole series of comics in my library. Dropbox users on the iPad app can open supported file types using Comic Zeal as their app of choice, which also makes it easier to get comics into the app. The sliders don't readily show you hints that they are actionable (they look like a decorative ribbon), and the learning curve in using them is a bit of an annoyance.

Most comic reading apps don’t provide much besides basic reading and bookmarking functions, but Comic Zeal gives you plenty of options. You can choose background colors or use its eyedropper tool to add a new one. Its built-in brightness slider is a great time saver, because otherwise you’d have to return to the iPhone or iPad Settings app to control the screen brightness. You can even change controls to the other side for left-handed users and customize gestures for advancing pages. The app can differentiate between Western and manga formats. Comic Zeal also offers assisted panning for guiding you from panel to panel without having to use gestures to zoom in and out.

Platform: iPad and iPhone

Format support: CBR, CBZ, RAR, ZIP PDF

The Good: The slick design and robust features make this definitely feel "pro."

I have used Cloud Readers in the past, and it does a fairly solid job of both organizing comic files and getting out of your way when you want to read. This app is not going to win any user experience awards, but it works well otherwise. Syncing is not that different from many of the others: you connect via USB cable and sync between your iTunes library, which allows you to add comic files.

The thumbnails are mysteriously blank, and it looks like you can also see your reading progress in the bars next to each title, though the lighter colors used for the reading portion make it look like it’s reversed. The app’s support for reading from right to left might have something to do with this, but the lack of visible cues, labels, or other useful information just left me guessing.

If you want to sync via WiFi, the app comes with some complicated instructions on how to do so by connecting via an IP address. A note on the instructions screen basically tells you it’s easier to use the USB method and that you are better off without trying over WiFi. Cloud Readers does offer some ability to download titles from its “cloud,” but since the app doesn’t have a lot of documentation, it’s hard to say if these are just sample titles that can be used to test drive the app.

Cloud Readers supports tagging as a way to manage and organize titles, and I would be excited to take advantage of this if it weren’t so difficult to use. The tagging function lets you filter, but it’s impossible to manage tags. In terms of reading simplicity, the app gives you a progress tracker bar that is easy to spot and hide/show as necessary. You can also toggle the reading direction from conventional left-to-right into right-to-left if you are reading manga.

It’s worth mentioning that Cloud Readers supports annotation and peer-to-peer sharing over Bluetooth. The annotation feature requires you to download the Neu.Notes app (which is free). I can’t recommend it, since it doesn’t integrate right into the comic reading experience. The peer-to-peer sharing is an in-app purchase, and it costs $2.99.

Platform: iPad and iPhone

Format support: PDF, CBZ, ZIP, CBR and RAR

The Good: It works just fine and it's especially good if you read lots of manga.

Enlarge/ Sidebooks plays nice with users who have comics collections in Dropbox.

I have to admit, Sidebooks is the first "real" dedicated comics app I ever used on my iPad, and it remains a favorite. Sidebooks performs decently both in the transfer and organization of comics files onto the device, as well as in the actual comics reading experience. You can load and sync your comics into Sidebooks using USB, but Sidebooks lets you integrate your Dropbox account. You can view all your folders, and if you select supported comics files, you can begin reading within seconds. It also supports direct transfer from other applications inside iOS, just like Comic Zeal.

Sidebooks offers nice customization to read from left to right or right to left, and you can also turn on page animations (though I'm not sure how many people actually want this anachronistic feature nowadays). The bookmarks are easy to read and use. Sidebooks also lets you send your comics to other apps to open them, and it can also e-mail and print, right from the reading view.

Platform: iPad and iPhone

Format support: PDF, ZIP, CBZ, ZIP, CBR and RAR

The Good: Syncing and opening files is awesome, and Dropbox integration makes it a winner.

Enlarge/ Stanza is a little neglected, but it still works if you need to read books and comics in one app.

Stanza is an app that has plenty of nice UI touches and features that make it a pretty robust reading application for both iPhone and iPad. When Lexcycle, the developer of e-book reader Stanza, was acquired, support for the app virtually disappeared. Stanza supports multiple e-book formats, and it also happens to support CBR and CBZ files for people looking to read their comics. Sure, there may not be much support coming, but those iOS users looking to conserve space can use it to hold both books and comic books in one single app. This app also syncs book collections via USB.

If you’re using a retina-screen iPhone or iPad, you will notice right away that many of the UI elements of stanza are pixellated and fuzzy, since they have not been updated for retina screens. Don't let that deter you from trying out the app. What the app lacks in sharpness is made up for in a great interface. The management of files is simple. Add your books using USB and iTunes, and when you launch the app, you’ll see your library listed on the main screen. The large thumbnails and title text make it easy to read, and you can even see your progress in each book listed in the pie-chart inspired progress trackers next to each one. You can sort books and comics by title, author, and groups, provided that your files have metadata that can sort into groups according to genre, and other attributes.

Formats supported: CBR, CBZ, PDF, ePub, E-reader, DjVu

The Good: You can use it for comics and books.

The Bad: Don’t expect any support.

Conclusion

My reading habits are always dependent on being able to have easy access to my own libraries. I like the convenience of having lots of titles to choose from on my device, and if it can be done with very few steps, even better. Before I reviewed all the apps mentioned above, I was a pretty avid user of Sidebooks. Sidebooks' user interface kept things pretty simple. It's not very customizable, but it is very easy to use. It was also the first comics iOS app that I ever used in conjunction with my comics folders in Dropbox.

As I began to use Comic Zeal, I was really blown away by its overall elegance. It really stands out as the best of the bunch. The design and UI feel warm and inviting, and its controls give me quick access to search and tags, which really can help cut down on time when I need a particular title. It was also quite responsive, and its reading customization put it way ahead of the other apps. I still wish it could sync with other cloud storage services, but I can easily say that its $4.99 price tag is worth the money for readers who care about enjoying comics. Though Sidebooks takes the runner-up title, it's still a great option for those on a budget.

The other three apps in the group are not bad either, and readers who have certain preferences will probably find something that fits most of those needs. The storing and syncing capabilities of these apps still leave some room for improvement, but the addition of syncing over WiFi helps. The resolutions available in newer versions of the iPad and iPhone certainly render comics pretty nicely. When it comes to the reading experience, these apps do a pretty good job of letting you forget that you are reading, which is definitely what any comics lover wants most of all.

Cesar Torres
Cesar is the Social Editor at Ars Technica. His areas of expertise are in online communities, human-computer interaction, usability, and e-reader technology. Cesar lives in New York City. Emailcesar.torres@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Urraca

Bookman FTW. It has the best controls of any reader I've tried, and flips pages the way you meant every time. My preferred control setup is with the left and right edges of the screen split 1/3 of the way down, so tapping the lower 2/3 of either side does a page forward, the top 1/3 goes a page back. Tapping the center column toggles the UI. Turn off double tap to zoom (which isn't a smartzoom anyway), and leave the taps open to flipping many pages quickly. A swipe left or right is always a page turn in that direction.

Bookman supports import via Dropbox, the usual miserable iTunes, and Open In.. from any other service.

Viz is a good choice if you're into manga, and don't mind their reasonably fair DRM. They have a too-simple UI, no autobookmarking, but Viz does have good prices. They had 20% off everything sale a week ago, dunno how often that happens.

When I was testing my own comics, which I sell as DRM-free PDFs, I honestly spent all my time testing with just the iBooks app, never even thought to try all these others. Thanks for the writeup I'm going to review these and maybe link to the best one as a recommendation.

I currently read digital comics using Comixology app on a Kindle Fire. The Fire's smaller screen size leaves something to be desired when compared to a normal monthly book.

I don't have an iPad, so I'm wondering how that fares when compared with the printed page (10 1/4 inches tall and about 6 3/4 inches wide)?

Thanks!Rudy

for whatever reason, comixology didn't do it for me on the Fire.. since comics was one of the reasons I bought it.. I returned it after a few days.

i got a nexus 7 for the same reason, and it's a much better experience than the Fire... and at 7" the nexus is preferable to my ipad retina for weight considerations primarily. although the gamut on the nexus is a bit "washed" compared to the ipad, performance wise, it's up to par.

all reading now - books and comics is done on the nexus... my kindle is going to be retired.

i'd say, an ipad or nexus will bring you better/smoother performance.. but if that's not an issue for you, then the ipad won't bring that much to the table (as just a reader..... vastly superior app selection on iOS though.. google play kind of sucks - haven't even managed to spend the $25 credit yet).

worth noting - i bought a whole series of comics via in app purchase in the ipad... not sure how, but comixology let me "restore" those to the nexus. i was a little surprised. tip o' the hat to those guys.

ComicZeal has been the best reader I have used on any device. There is a learning curve and the developer has done a great job of embedding the how-to's into the application. Just a well designed application that makes reading any cbr or cbz easy. I have even taking to using to read zipped up manuals I have downloaded.

I believe that a comic reader UI should be invisible. All of the controls that are allowed to exist must be in service of reading. Comic Zeal was my first choice on the iPad, but its UI got more and more cluttered as time went on.

So now I use ComicGlass. It does have the optional "bookshelf view" that many others are plagued with, but that is easily avoided. You can sync issues through iTunes, read from Dropbox, or use a server app on OS X or Windows to hand out books from your already-existing folder structure.

For the 20 people who own Android tablets, the best comic/manga reader on that side is Perfect Viewer. It's what I use on my fire-sale Touchpad for reading manga.

A bought an Android tablet as a potential Archos replacement because it was small and cheap. It was cheap enough to be an impulse buy. Thought I would give it to the kid (the one that uses the Archos) but it got confiscated by the local iFan. The iPad subsequently got dumped and the dumping of an iPhone quickly followed.

Makes you wonder if Apple will try to sue Amazon after they finally release a 7 inch tablet.

Comic Zeal was the first app I purchased specifically for the original iPad. It has been a mainstay on the dock since.

It may have been my first as well. I read the headline and thought "Comic Zeal - done".

I do use ComicZeal for all my cbr and cbz files and it's fantastic. However it sucks for those old Marvel PDFs in my experience-bogs down and not responsive. Cloud Reader to the rescue for those. The tagging feature is usableOnce you get your mind around how it works (I like to import in batches, based on how I would tag) and it handles the PDFs just fine (albeit with the watermark; but then even Adobe Reader for iPad does that so there isn't any alternative for that that I know of).

For the 20 people who own Android tablets, the best comic/manga reader on that side is Perfect Viewer. It's what I use on my fire-sale Touchpad for reading manga.

I'm gonna second that. I use Perfect Viewer to view Gold Digger black and white issues with 3megapixel pages on a (by todays standards) old Coby Kyros 7015a. Every other "CBZ" reader I've run into chokes on them. There is some piece of memory management and multi-threading that the author of Perfect Viewer does right that everybody else does wrong.

I currently read digital comics using Comixology app on a Kindle Fire. The Fire's smaller screen size leaves something to be desired when compared to a normal monthly book.

I don't have an iPad, so I'm wondering how that fares when compared with the printed page (10 1/4 inches tall and about 6 3/4 inches wide)?

Thanks!Rudy

I use Comixology on an iPad 2 and it works quite well for full-page reading 90% of the time. It falls down on two-page spreads, and on small and/or highly stylized lettering. I'd imagine that the new iPad would only struggle with spreads. You'd need a bigass tablet to do a good job of simulating two full comic pages.

But I'm trying really hard to convince myself that I don't really want that high DPI screen.

For the 20 people who own Android tablets, the best comic/manga reader on that side is Perfect Viewer. It's what I use on my fire-sale Touchpad for reading manga.

I'm gonna second that. I use Perfect Viewer to view Gold Digger black and white issues with 3megapixel pages on a (by todays standards) old Coby Kyros 7015a. Every other "CBZ" reader I've run into chokes on them. There is some piece of memory management and multi-threading that the author of Perfect Viewer does right that everybody else does wrong.

+1 for Perfect Viewer, I just read 100 or issues of the Walking Dead using it on a Transformer 300 and it was great. I love that the free version is ad free as well (I paid for the donation version after ~10 issues). I then got Comixology and bought the latest issue on there and it was pretty good too...

For the 20 people who own Android tablets, the best comic/manga reader on that side is Perfect Viewer. It's what I use on my fire-sale Touchpad for reading manga.

I'm gonna second that. I use Perfect Viewer to view Gold Digger black and white issues with 3megapixel pages on a (by todays standards) old Coby Kyros 7015a. Every other "CBZ" reader I've run into chokes on them. There is some piece of memory management and multi-threading that the author of Perfect Viewer does right that everybody else does wrong.

Thirded. I picked up a Nexus 7 and one of my planned uses was comics/books reading and perfect viewer is simply the best for comics. easy controls, snappy response and handles large files extremely well.

chiming in for my preferred Android comic reader - ComicRack (paid), it syncs up w/ the desktop version of ComicRack quite well. i build smart lists of what i want on my tablet, click wifi sync, and the comics are automatically transferred from my desktop to the tablet (with the option to have the images recompressed to tablet appropriate sizes to use less storage)

For the 20 people who own Android tablets, the best comic/manga reader on that side is Perfect Viewer. It's what I use on my fire-sale Touchpad for reading manga.

I'm gonna second that. I use Perfect Viewer to view Gold Digger black and white issues with 3megapixel pages on a (by todays standards) old Coby Kyros 7015a. Every other "CBZ" reader I've run into chokes on them. There is some piece of memory management and multi-threading that the author of Perfect Viewer does right that everybody else does wrong.

uhm..I just downloaded perfect viewer - it seems to have some issues with Android v4.x devices who have only 3 hardware buttons (namely BACK - HOME - LIST RUNNING APPS) and when I'm in the settings, and trying to hit the BACK button to go back to "main-program screen" it just quits/exits directly from the settings screen :/

chiming in for my preferred Android comic reader - ComicRack (paid), it syncs up w/ the desktop version of ComicRack quite well. i build smart lists of what i want on my tablet, click wifi sync, and the comics are automatically transferred from my desktop to the tablet (with the option to have the images recompressed to tablet appropriate sizes to use less storage)

+ for ComicRack on the Android side of things. I used Perfect Viewer for a year. Its small, simple, and fast. Definately gets the job done. Also a really good PDF viewer with the plugin. But I use ComicRack on my PC for managing files. Being able to wireless sync my reading progress over multiple devices (SGSIII, N7, and PC) is just invaluable.

Out of interest, where does one purchase these "DRM free" comics? The stores I've found in the past seem to predominantly be for niche titles and even then seemed to offer fairly limited selection. Or is my inner cynic right in guessing that in this instance "DRM free" is just code for "pirated"?

For the 20 people who own Android tablets, the best comic/manga reader on that side is Perfect Viewer. It's what I use on my fire-sale Touchpad for reading manga.

I'm gonna second that. I use Perfect Viewer to view Gold Digger black and white issues with 3megapixel pages on a (by todays standards) old Coby Kyros 7015a. Every other "CBZ" reader I've run into chokes on them. There is some piece of memory management and multi-threading that the author of Perfect Viewer does right that everybody else does wrong.

Another bonus of Android comic viewers is that I can just copy-paste pre-organized folders to SD.Used Perfect Viewer to read Strange World of Your Dreams by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and it served well.

I use ComicGlass for comics and manga. It is very flexible with its options and the page previews load fast(maybe because of the new iPad). Pin lock for folders is great for silly content that others may not approve.

The entire reason I bought an iPad was because of ComicZeal. I have a metric tonne of comics that I was reading on my iPhone. When the iPad 2 dropped, I grabbed an original iPad on sale and I cannot say enough about it. Every other app I've tried has been buggy, or crashed often enough not to make it worth my time. I hadn't heard of Bookman, but it looks like there are a heck of a lot more features than ComicZeal, but honestly I don't need them. I guess it would be cool to sync with DropBox, etc, but I don't use it like that. Additionally, even if you have a 64 GB iPad, you are never going to put enough comics on it at once to warrant over-the-top organizational features. I read a bunch, then delete them off and put more on. I think it would be neat to annotate comics and docs if I were working on a project, but again I just read for pleasure. So while features are great, my biggest concern is user interface and stability and ComicZeal just never fails. The only downside is the price and honestly I don't know how well it interfaces with manga because I never read it. If you have a lot of comics and add comics in chunks, ComicZeal is worth the $5 a hundred times over.

Additionally, i've emailed the developer a couple of times, at first to thank him for the app but also for answers to questions and he has been nothing short of awesome. It is definitely a labor of love for him and you can tell that he wants to deliver the best experience possible. To give you an idea of how he approached this app look up ThinkBook, his other app. It is an awesome note-taking and organizational tool.

Out of interest, where does one purchase these "DRM free" comics? The stores I've found in the past seem to predominantly be for niche titles and even then seemed to offer fairly limited selection. Or is my inner cynic right in guessing that in this instance "DRM free" is just code for "pirated"?

Creator websites. Mark Waid for one is doing it with his thrillbent comics AFAIK.

Out of interest, where does one purchase these "DRM free" comics? The stores I've found in the past seem to predominantly be for niche titles and even then seemed to offer fairly limited selection. Or is my inner cynic right in guessing that in this instance "DRM free" is just code for "pirated"?

www.comicbookplus.com has a great collection of public domain Golden and Silver Age comics for legal download.

Out of interest, where does one purchase these "DRM free" comics? The stores I've found in the past seem to predominantly be for niche titles and even then seemed to offer fairly limited selection. Or is my inner cynic right in guessing that in this instance "DRM free" is just code for "pirated"?

In my case the GD-ROM collections from Antartic Press. They're a comic archive in two forms: PDF and folders full of images. I take the folders full of images, massage file names for consistent alphabetization and package them in multi-issue zip file volumes which is what a lot of comic reader programs on the PC take in (can be renamed .cbz just like Java renames as .jar, also I go with no compression for faster read times). I think the format was probably originally used mostly for pirated content (scanlations of manga for example often come this way).

Myself I'm using Comixology since it has loads of publishers (so it might be hard to acctually find new series that you like). They don't have any load your own series thing so I expect to see it in the next comic reader article. And I discovered a bunch of new series that I like, even though sometimes it feels a bit funny reading on my 3.5" iPod touch :-) but it works (for me anyway) since all text etc is zoomed in and displayed in the right order and so on.

Plus it exists for both Android and iOS with the nice feature that they "track" what you bough so you can just click "download my series" if you switched from ios to android and you're ready to go again.

Only thing I'm missing in it is Disney since I love some of the don rosa series (and a sucker for most of Duckburg ;-)) but the Disney comic app is the only one for (legal) Disney stuff but it's kinda bad, not that many series plus way to expensive...

So I guess Disney won't be getting my money, Comixology is getting some though... :-)

(and I used to like stanza but since they where bought nothing has happened to make I look/work better witch is kinda sad, it was the best reading app before, now maybe not..)

Yet another vote for Comic Zeal. I'm a beta tester, and the dev is amazingly responsive to user requests. Every single thing I asked for was incorporated, usually with a better implementation than my original suggestion. The simple ability to remove *all* GUI elements from the page except for a nearly-transparent (movable) button means that you don't have the problem of the GUI overlay suddenly appearing when you touch the screen wrong -- something I find horribly distracting.

I'm up to 1971 in my 'read every Marvel comic since 1960' project. Comic Zeal has been a rock for the first 11 years.